Archive for the ‘NFL’ Category

NFL remains by far the best attended domestic sports league in the world

Friday, January 4th, 2013

*

By Sportingintelligence

4 January 2013

The NFL has increased its attendance levels from an average of 67,394 fans per regular season game in 2011 to 67,591 in 2012, Sportingintelligence can reveal on the eve of the 2012-13 season NFL play-offs.

As our updated global attendances league table shows (also below), the new figure keeps the NFL comfortably in the No1 place as the best attended professional domestic sports league in the world, by average attendance per game.

There are better attended sports leagues in US College football, as a previous feature on this site explored.

But the NFL holds sway in the world of professional sports.

The German Bundesliga’s top division keeps the No2 spot thanks to a new seasonal record of 45,116 fans per game in 2011-12, up from 42,673 the season before.

The English Premier League has leapfrogged Australian’s Aussie Rules AFL league into third place. Both those leagues saw season-on-season declines but the decline was sharper in the AFL.

The top 10 leagues are shown below, as are the two biggest indoor leagues, the NBA and NHL, with the NHL overtaking the NBA in 2011-12.

Big crowds don’t always mean big paydays for the stars involved. The NBA is the best-paid league in the world by average earnings per player.

Sportingintelligence’s Global Sports Salary Survey in 2012 showed that MLB baseball players, Premier League football players, Bundesliga footballers and NHL ice hockey stars all had average annual salaries higher than NFL players.

MLB baseball attracts more fans in total per season than any pro league in the world (almost 75 million in 2012), but fewer on average per game than the NFL.

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Tags: AFL, baseball, basketball, Bundesliga, CFL, cricket, football, IPL, La Liga, MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, NPB, Premier League, Serie A, soccer
Posted in Baseball, Basketball, Cricket, Football, News, NFL | No Comments »

Graphically speaking: the world’s best paid sports teams from Barca to the Crew

Friday, May 4th, 2012

By Nick Harris

SJA Internet Sports Writer of the Year

4 May 2012

As revealed earlier this week, Sportingintelligence’s Global Sports Salaries Survey 2012 has again found Barcelona to be the world’s best paid sports team.

CLICK HERE to read more detail about the 278 featured teams from 14 leagues in 10 countries from seven sports, employing 7,925 first-team sportsmen earning £10bn a year between them.

This project, in association with ESPN The Magazine in America, has natural ‘accounting lag’ in some sports: seasons finish at different times in the calendar year. The wages we’ve considered include the current ongoing seasons in the NBA, NHL, MLS and MLB and the 2011-12 NFL, as well the most recently completed seasons in all the other leagues, no further back than seasons ending in summer or autumn 2011.

One significant reason for compiling our annual report is to explore the relationship between money and success in different sports.

Regular readers will know this is a recurring theme, and we will publish more in-depth league-by-league analysis in the coming weeks and months, as well as a 10-year breakdown of precisely how money has fueled on-pitch success (or not) in the English Premier League, and a special feature on the global sports tycoons who are increasingly becoming multi-sport owners of major clubs.

To illustrate how different leagues are polarised by money, or not, below are the wage distribution graphs of the 14 featured leagues.

In crude, general terms, where the distribution is flat, the league should tend towards ‘fairness’, because most teams get similar sorts of money.

So the flatter the line between the best paid and worst, the fairer. And the sharper the descent from left to right, the more dominant the best-paid teams are likely to be.

And on that theme, this is …

… Spanish La Liga football

The SPL in Scotland.

Serie A in Italy

The Premier League in England

The MLS in North America

The Bundesliga in Germany

The MLB in North America

The NPB (baseball) in Japan

The NHL in North America

The NFL in America

The NBA in North America

The IPL (cricket) in India

The CFL (gridiron) in Canada

The AFL (Aussie Rules) in Australia

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Posted in Baseball, Basketball, Cricket, Football, News, NFL | No Comments »

REVEALED: The world’s best paid teams, Man City close in on Barca and Real Madrid

Tuesday, May 1st, 2012

By Nick Harris

SJA Internet Sports Writer of the Year

1 May 2012

Barcelona remain the best paid team in global sport measured by average first-team wages, with Real Madrid in second place but Manchester City of the Premier League have stormed into the top three and continue to close the gap on the Spanish giants according to the Sportingintelligence Global Sports Salaries Survey 2012, published this week.

The average first team pay at Barcelona – employees of the world’s best player, Lionel Messi – has been calculated at £101,160 per player per week, or £5,260,313 per year in the period under review. That represents a year-on-year increase of 10 per cent at the Nou Camp as Barca hold their No1 spot.

Real Madrid’s players in No2 place earned £90,859 per week (£4.7m per year, a rise of six per cent).

First-team stars at City, at No3, earned an average of £86,280 per man per week, or £4.5m per year, the highest salaries ever paid in the English Premier League, the world’s richest football league. City’s numbers represent a 26 per cent year-on-year increase in average first-team pay and demonstrate the depth of the pockets of oil-rich owner Sheikh Mansour.

Another Premier League team, Chelsea, climb from No6 to No4 this year, with average first-team pay of £4.1m per player, a reminder they are hardly paupers, despite a perception in some quarters that their Russian petrodollar billionaire owner Roman Abramovich has eased off his spending recently.

Chelsea’s progress to the 2012 Champions League final at the expense of Barcelona was a shock in footballing terms but not unsurprising set against the reservoirs of cash Abramovich has spent on players, managers and salaries since 2003.

Click on graphic (above) to enlarge to see the top 12 in detail. The full list is below. AND IN GRAPHICS BY LEAGUE HERE

This year’s report has been again been compiled in association with ESPN The Magazine in America, for a special ‘All About the Money’ issue, on sale this week.

The salaries report (available as a PDF here) features average salary information from 278 teams in 14 leagues in seven sports across 10 countries. It includes information from the dozen most popular sports leagues in the world (by average attendance per game) plus the MLS and SPL as examples of smaller leagues from the world’s most popular sport, football.

Figures are from the in-progress seasons in NBA basketball, NHL ice hockey, MLB baseball and MLS football, and from the most recently completed seasons for all the other teams, including the major leagues of European football to IPL cricket, AFL Aussie Rules, CFL Canadian football and NPB Japanese baseball.

The full list is below, while ESPN The Magazine also carries details online at this link, where there are more links to other content and details about the special issue of the magazine.

Sportingintelligence’s first global salaries report was published in 2010, to compare average first-team pay on a like-for-like basis for the first time at clubs in the world’s richest and most popular sports leagues. The New York Yankees were No1 that year, and the top 10 included seven American sports teams, six of them from the NBA.

By last year, the Yankees had been knocked off their perch by Barca and Real, and Manchester City had soared from No86 in the 2010 list into the No10 spot in 2011. The top 10 in 2011 had five American teams and five from European football.

This year’s top 10 has three American teams (the Yankees and Phillies from baseball and the LA Lakers from the NBA) and seven European football teams.

As the introduction to the main report notes: “This is a function of the unrelenting growth in football income – and expenditure – among the elite clubs in European football, which is also unhindered by any wage caps, and the relative stability and restraint in America’s major sports leagues.

“It is possible but by no means certain that some wage restraint at some European football clubs is on the horizon as a result of new ‘Financial Fair Play’ rules (FFP) being introduced by Uefa, the governing body of football across Europe … But the effectiveness of Uefa’s policing remains to be seen. And in any case, the biggest, richest clubs will almost certainly continue to generate massive sums, and therefore continue to fund growing salary bills.”

The top 20 in the 2012 review includes six teams from the NBA, five from the Premier League, four from MLB baseball, two each from La Liga and Serie A and one from the Bundesliga.

The full report includes an overview of average salaries across each league, and considers the pay differential between the best-paid team in each league and the lowest-paid team.

The NBA remains the best-paid league overall per man, with average annual salaries of £2.65m a year, or £50,883 per player per week on average. The LA Lakers are the highest paying team in the NBA and the Indian Pacers the lowest, and the difference between the two is a ratio of 1.86 to 1.

This is tiny compared the ratio between the best paid and worst paid in Spain: 22.81 to 1. That is why Barcelona and Real Madrid are way head of everyone else in that league. Even the Scottish SPL is no longer as stretched as that (with a ratio of 19.18 to 1 between top and bottom).

This year’s full 18-page report, available as a PDF, includes introductory analysis on trends, has the full list of average salaries, contains the summary information about leagues as a whole. More in-depth league-by-league analysis will be published over time on this website.

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Global Sports Salaries Survey 2012: the richest teams by average first-team pay

The sports are colour-coded: football, basketball, baseball, cricket, gridiron, ice hockey, Aussie rules football

* Highest paid in that league. NB: IPL annual figures extrapolated, pro rata, from weekly figures.

Rank (last year) – Team – League – Ave player pay, £ per year (week) - Ave player pay $ per year (week)

1 (1) Barcelona * La Liga £5,260,313 (£101,160) $8,680,569 ($166,934)

2 (2) Real Madrid La Liga £4,724,662 (£90,859) $7,796,637 ($149,935)

3 (10) Manchester City * EPL £4,486,580 (£86,280) $7,403,754 ($142,380)

4 (6) Chelsea EPL £4,118,227 (£79,197) $6,795,899 ($130,690)

5 (4) LA Lakers * NBA £3,804,441 (£73,162) $6,278,088 ($120,732)

6 (3) New York Yankees * MLB £3,748,831 (£72,093) $6,186,322 ($118,968)

7 (14) Milan * Serie A £3,699,411 (£71,143) $6,104,769 ($117,399)

8 (12) Bayern Munich * Bundesliga £3,579,961 (£68,845) $5,907,652 ($113,609)

9 (13) Philadelphia Phillies MLB £3,525,612 (£67,800) $5,817,965 ($111,884)

10 (7) Internazionale Serie A £3,454,681 (£66,436) $5,700,915 ($109,633)

11 (16) Manchester United EPL £3,345,911 (£64,344) $5,521,423 ($106,181)

12 (43) San Antonio Spurs NBA £3,302,712 (£63,514) $5,450,135 ($104,810)

13 (28) LA Angels MLB £3,228,139 (£62,080) $5,327,075 ($102,444)

14 (42) Chicago Bulls NBA £3,226,329 (£62,045) $5,324,088 ($102,386)

15 (15) Boston Celtics NBA £3,224,721 (£62,014) $5,321,435 ($102,335)

16 (22) Arsenal EPL £3,199,678 (£61,532) $5,280,108 ($101,541)

17 (58) Miami Heat NBA £3,188,496 (£61,317) $5,261,657 ($101,186)

18 (20) Liverpool EPL £3,169,631 (£60,954) $5,230,525 ($100,587)

19 (8) Boston Red Sox MLB £3,086,731 (£59,360) $5,093,724 ($97,956)

20 (27) Memphis Grizzlies NBA £3,040,693 (£58,475) $5,017,751 ($96,495)

21 (21) Dallas Mavericks NBA £2,989,371 (£57,488) $4,933,060 ($94,867)

22 (24) Atlanta Hawks NBA £2,933,753 (£56,418) $4,841,280 ($93,102)

23 (19) Philadelphia 76ers NBA £2,909,924 (£55,960) $4,801,957 ($92,345)

24 (52) LA Clippers NBA £2,874,816 (£55,285) $4,744,022 ($91,231)

25 (38) Juventus Serie A £2,845,701 (£54,725) $4,695,976 ($90,307)

26 (66) Texas Rangers MLB £2,808,773 (£54,015) $4,635,037 ($89,135)

27 (47) Detroit Tigers MLB £2,764,555 (£53,165) $4,562,069 ($87,732)

28 (5) Orlando Magic NBA £2,757,779 (£53,034) $4,550,887 ($87,517)

29 (123) Miami Marlins MLB £2,650,139 (£50,964) $4,373,259 ($84,101)

30 (£6) Portland Trail Blazers NBA £2,641,418 (£50,797) $4,358,869 ($83,824)

31 (39) Phoenix Suns NBA £2,608,333 (£50,160) $4,304,271 ($82,774)

32 (35) Milwaukee Bucks NBA £2,594,772 (£49,899) $4,281,893 ($82,344)

33 (37) New Orleans Hornets NBA £2,543,396 (£48,911) $4,197,111 ($80,714)

34 (56) Schalke Bundesliga £2,537,706 (£48,802) $4,187,722 ($80,533)

35 (31) Detroit Pistons NBA £2,528,854 (£48,632) $4,173,115 ($80,252)

36 (29) Kolkata Knight Riders * IPL £2,525,129 (£48,560) $4,166,968 ($80,134)

37 (49) NY Knicks NBA £2,524,456 (£48,547) $4,165,858 ($80,113)

38 (11) Utah Jazz NBA £2,517,627 (£48,416) $4,154,588 ($79,896)

39 (44) Mumbai Indians IPL £2,509,657 (£48,263) $4,141,436 ($79,643)

40 (34) Golden State Warriors NBA £2,474,790 (£47,592) $4,083,898 ($78,537)

41 (51) Aston Villa EPL £2,464,831 (£47,401) $4,067,464 ($78,220)

42 (9) Denver Nuggets NBA £2,463,222 (£47,370) $4,064,809 ($78,169)

43 (53) New Jersey Nets NBA £2,417,102 (£46,483) $3,988,701 ($76,706)

44 (48) St Louis Cardinals MLB £2,387,175 (£45,907) $3,939,317 ($75,756)

45 (55) Washington Wizards NBA £2,385,681 (£45,878) $3,936,851 ($75,709)

46 (33) San Francisco Giants MLB £2,375,887 (£45,690) $3,920,689 ($75,398)

47 (62) Roma Serie A £2,361,932 (£45,422) $3,897,660 ($74,955)

48 (23) Chicago White Sox MLB £2,349,279 (£45,178) $3,876,780 ($74,553)

49 (32) Charlotte Bobcats NBA £2,339,193 (£44,984) $3,860,136 ($74,233)

50 (-) Pune Warriors IPL £2,326,765 (£44,745) $3,839,628 ($73,839)

51 (110) Tottenham EPL £2,308,494 (£44,394) $3,809,476 ($73,259)

52 (87) Minnesota Timberwolves NBA £2,296,463 (£44,163) $3,789,623 ($72,877)

53 (18) Houston Rockets NBA £2,292,551 (£44,088) $3,783,167 ($72,753)

54 (73) Milwaukee Brewers MLB £2,276,040 (£43,770) $3,755,921 ($72,229)

55 (26) Royal Challengers Bangalore IPL £2,262,072 (£43,501) $3,732,872 ($71,786)

56 (46) Toronto Raptors NBA £2,222,318 (£42,737) $3,667,270 ($70,524)

57 (50) Oklahoma City Thunder NBA £2,220,345 (£42,699) $3,664,013 ($70,462)

58 (-) Kochi Tuskers Kerala IPL £2,186,099 (£42,040) $3,607,500 ($69,375)

59 (60) Delhi Daredevils IPL £2,184,618 (£42,012) $3,605,056 ($69,328)

60 (54) Chennai Super Kings IPL £2,154,524 (£41,433) $3,555,396 ($68,373)

61 (69) Sacramento Kings NBA £2,118,801 (£40,746) $3,496,445 ($67,239)

62 (25) Minnesota Twins MLB £2,111,641 (£40,608) $3,484,630 ($67,012)

63 (30) New York Mets MLB £2,095,234 (£40,293) $3,457,555 ($66,491)

64 (59) Cleveland Cavaliers NBA £2,056,330 (£39,545) $3,393,356 ($65,257)

65 (17) Chicago Cubs MLB £2,055,626 (£39,531) $3,392,194 ($65,234)

66 (41) Indiana Pacers NBA £2,050,492 (£39,433) $3,383,722 ($65,072) <<<<< NBA lowest paid

67 (45) Deccan Chargers IPL £1,990,571 (£38,280) $3,284,840 ($63,170)

68 (126) Rajasthan Royals IPL £1,968,040 (£37,847) $3,247,660 ($62,455)

69 (57) Los Angeles Dodgers MLB £1,921,859 (£36,959) $3,171,453 ($60,989)

70 (86) Borussia Dortmund Bundesliga £1,892,391 (£36,392) $3,122,824 ($60,054)

71 (68) Valencia La Liga £1,857,660 (£35,724) $3,065,511 ($58,952)

72 (109) Buffalo Sabres * NHL £1,833,553 (£35,261) $3,025,729 ($58,187)

73 (78) Chicago Blackhawks NHL £1,826,261 (£35,120) $3,013,696 ($57,956)

74 (40) Kings XI Punjab IPL £1,785,180 (£34,330) $2,945,904 ($56,652) <<<<< IPL lowest paid

75 (105) Pittsburgh Steelers * NFL £1,779,939 (£34,230) $2,937,255 ($56,486)

76 (92) Cincinnati Reds MLB £1,779,083 (£34,213) $2,935,843 ($56,459)

77 (71) Seattle Mariners MLB £1,774,203 (£34,119) $2,927,789 ($56,304)

78 (65) Baltimore Orioles MLB £1,701,549 (£32,722) $2,807,897 ($53,998)

79 (64) Atlanta Braves MLB £1,682,825 (£32,362) $2,776,998 ($53,404)

80 (85) Oakland Raiders NFL £1,673,000 (£32,173) $2,760,784 ($53,092)

81 (76) Werder Bremen Bundesliga £1,657,329 (£31,872) $2,734,924 ($52,595)

82 (84) Stuttgart Bundesliga £1,648,984 (£31,711) $2,721,154 ($52,330)

83 (158) Cleveland Indians MLB £1,638,888 (£31,517) $2,704,493 ($52,009)

84 (139) Toronto Blue Jays MLB £1,633,767 (£31,419) $2,696,043 ($51,847)

85 (61) Colorado Rockies MLB £1,631,350 (£31,372) $2,692,054 ($51,770)

86 (100) Washington Capitals NHL £1,623,137 (£31,214) $2,678,500 ($51,510)

87 (98) New York Rangers NHL £1,619,638 (£31,147) $2,672,727 ($51,399)

88 (77) Boston Bruins NHL £1,610,158 (£30,965) $2,657,083 ($51,098)

89 (142) Arizona Diamondbacks MLB £1,607,702 (£30,917) $2,653,030 ($51,020)

90 (88) Vancouver Canucks NHL £1,606,647 (£30,897) $2,651,288 ($50,986)

91 (122) Washington Nationals MLB £1,589,957 (£30,576) $2,623,747 ($50,457)

92 (135) LA Kings NHL £1,566,792 (£30,131) $2,585,521 ($49,722)

93 (106) Hamburg Bundesliga £1,563,389 (£30,065) $2,579,904 ($49,614)

94 (91) Atletico Madrid La Liga £1,560,739 (£30,014) $2,575,531 ($49,529)

95 (119) Carolina Panthers NFL £1,543,485 (£29,682) $2,547,059 ($48,982)

96 (104) Sevilla La Liga £1,542,974 (£29,673) $2,546,216 ($48,966)

97 (117) Tampa Bay Lightning NHL £1,538,324 (£29,583) $2,538,542 ($48,818)

98 (82) Dallas Cowboys NFL £1,531,603 (£29,454) $2,527,451 ($48,605)

99 (67) Detroit Red Wings NHL £1,530,481 (£29,432) $2,525,600 ($48,569)

100 (81) Philadelphia Flyers NHL £1,530,009 (£29,423) $2,524,821 ($48,554)

101 (121) New York Jets NFL £1,520,909 (£29,248) $2,509,804 ($48,265)

102 (118) Toronto Maples Leafs NHL £1,501,726 (£28,879) $2,478,148 ($47,657)

103 (124) New York Giants NFL £1,481,698 (£28,494) $2,445,098 ($47,021)

104 (136) Fulham EPL £1,469,616 (£28,262) $2,425,160 ($46,638)

105 (97) Detroit Lions NFL £1,457,934 (£28,037) $2,405,882 ($46,267)

106 (93) Montreal Canadiens NHL £1,454,370 (£27,969) $2,400,001 ($46,154)

107 (101) Pittsburgh Pengiuns NHL £1,451,914 (£27,921) $2,395,948 ($46,076)

108 (120) Everton EPL £1,437,370 (£27,642) $2,371,948 ($45,614)

109 (128) St Louis Rams NFL £1,436,546 (£27,626) $2,370,588 ($45,588)

110 (130) Sunderland EPL £1,434,654 (£27,590) $2,367,467 ($45,528)

111 (83) San Jose Sharks NHL £1,429,269 (£27,486) $2,358,580 ($45,357)

112 (151) Bolton EPL £1,419,805 (£27,304) $2,342,962 ($45,057)

113 (94) West Ham EPL £1,417,310 (£27,256) $2,338,844 ($44,978)

114 (103) Houston Astros MLB £1,413,605 (£27,185) $2,332,731 ($44,860)

115 (96) Calgary Flames NHL £1,410,498 (£27,125) $2,327,604 ($44,762)

116 (148) Arizona Cardinals NFL £1,410,405 (£27,123) $2,327,451 ($44,759)

117 (90) Green Bay Packers NFL £1,402,088 (£26,963) $2,313,725 ($44,495)

118 (125) Columbus Blue Jackets NHL £1,391,807 (£26,766) $2,296,759 ($44,168)

119 (164) Tampa Bay Rays MLB £1,388,868 (£26,709) $2,291,911 ($44,075)

120 (114) Indianapolis Colts NFL £1,386,641 (£26,666) $2,288,235 ($44,005)

121 (113) Miami Dolphins NFL £1,385,453 (£26,643) $2,286,275 ($43,967)

122 (108) Houston Texans NFL £1,381,888 (£26,575) $2,280,392 ($43,854)

123 (165) Bayer Leverkusen Bundesliga £1,380,595 (£26,550) $2,278,258 ($43,813)

124 (75) Minnesota Vikings NFL £1,378,324 (£26,506) $2,274,510 ($43,741)

125 (102) Baltimore Ravens NFL £1,373,571 (£26,415) $2,266,667 ($43,590)

126 (138) Anaheim Ducks NHL £1,364,380 (£26,238) $2,251,500 ($43,298)

127 (63) Newcastle EPL £1,357,295 (£26,102) $2,239,808 ($43,073)

128 (115) Philadelphia Eagles NFL £1,353,371 (£26,026) $2,233,333 ($42,949)

129 (95) New Jersey Devils NHL £1,352,382 (£26,007) $2,231,700 ($42,917)

130 (129) Carolina Hurricanes NHL £1,350,663 (£25,974) $2,228,864 ($42,863)

131 (74) New Orleans Saints NFL £1,346,242 (£25,889) $2,221,569 ($42,722)

132 (127) Dallas Stars NHL £1,336,333 (£25,699) $2,205,217 ($42,408)

133 (133) San Diego Chargers NFL £1,329,607 (£25,569) $2,194,118 ($42,195)

134 (80) Seattle Seahawks NFL £1,327,231 (£25,524) $2,190,196 ($42,119)

135 (168) Pittsburgh Pirates MLB £1,325,482 (£25,490) $2,187,310 ($42,064)

136 (116) Minnesota Wild NHL £1,312,836 (£25,247) $2,166,442 ($41,662)

137 (132) Blackburn EPL £1,311,509 (£25,221) $2,164,252 ($41,620)

138 (146) Florida Panthers NHL £1,295,717 (£24,918) $2,138,192 ($41,119)

139 (-) Nuremberg Bundesliga £1,291,892 (£24,844) $2,131,880 ($40,998)

140 (141) Buffalo Bills NFL £1,288,020 (£24,770) $2,125,490 ($40,875)

141 (155) Jacksonville Jaguars NFL £1,273,761 (£24,495) $2,101,961 ($40,422)

142 (137) Phoenix Coyotes NHL £1,247,955 (£23,999) $2,059,375 ($39,603)

143 (134) Fiorentina Serie A £1,244,543 (£23,934) $2,053,745 ($39,495)

144 (150) Edmonton Oilers NHL £1,233,521 (£23,722) $2,035,556 ($39,145)

145 (111) Cleveland Browns NFL £1,232,174 (£23,696) $2,033,333 ($39,103)

146 (180) Kansas City Royals MLB £1,230,482 (£23,663) $2,030,541 ($39,049)

147 (99) San Francisco 49ers NFL £1,222,668 (£23,513) $2,017,647 ($38,801)

148 (140) New England Patriots NFL £1,210,192 (£23,273) $1,997,059 ($38,405)

149 (79) Chicago Bears NFL £1,209,598 (£23,261) $1,996,078 ($38,386)

150 (157) Denver Broncos NFL £1,203,657 (£23,147) $1,986,275 ($38,198)

151 (145) Wolfsburg Bundesliga £1,198,642 (£23,051) $1,977,999 ($38,038)

152 (172) San Diego Padres MLB £1,195,628 (£22,993) $1,973,025 ($37,943)

153 (112) Atlanta Falcons NFL £1,190,587 (£22,896) $1,964,706 ($37,783)

154 (169) Winnipeg Jets NHL £1,189,916 (£22,883) $1,963,600 ($37,762)

155 (178) Stoke EPL £1,182,425 (£22,739) $1,951,237 ($37,524)

156 (89) Ottawa Senators NHL £1,175,918 (£22,614) $1,940,500 ($37,317)

157 (161) Tampa Bay Bucs NFL £1,175,140 (£22,599) $1,939,216 ($37,293)

158 (170) Lazio Serie A £1,166,737 (£22,437) $1,925,350 ($37,026)

159 (143) Nashville Predators NHL £1,166,059 (£22,424) $1,924,231 ($37,004)

160 (171) Athletic Bilbao La Liga £1,157,231 (£22,254) $1,909,662 ($36,724)

161 (156) St Louis Blues NHL £1,155,202 (£22,215) $1,906,314 ($36,660)

162 (149) Kansas City Chiefs NFL £1,138,305 (£21,890) $1,878,431 ($36,124)

163 (70) Washington Redskins NFL £1,120,482 (£21,548) $1,849,020 ($35,558)

164 (107) Oakland Athletics MLB £1,118,501 (£21,510) $1,845,750 ($35,495) <<<<< MLB lowest paid

165 (152) Wigan EPL £1,107,821 (£21,304) $1,828,126 ($35,156)

166 (179) Eintracht Frankfurt Bundesliga £1,102,140 (£21,195) $1,818,751 ($34,976)

167 (131) Tennessee Titans NFL £1,101,471 (£21,182) $1,817,647 ($34,955)

168 (147) Genoa Serie A £1,095,317 (£21,064) $1,807,493 ($34,759)

169 (-) Kaiserslautern Bundesliga £1,067,753 (£20,534) $1,762,005 ($33,885)

170 (173) Hoffenheim Bundesliga £1,067,138 (£20,522) $1,760,991 ($33,865)

171 (154) Cologne Bundesliga £1,066,511 (£20,510) $1,759,956 ($33,845)

172 (163) Celtic * SPL £1,065,304 (£20,487) $1,757,964 ($33,807)

173 (177) Hannover 96 Bundesliga £1,040,069 (£20,001) $1,716,322 ($33,006)

174 (-) Birmingham EPL £1,036,592 (£19,934) $1,710,585 ($32,896)

175 (159) Borussia Monchengladbach Bundesliga £1,020,423 (£19,624) $1,683,902 ($32,383)

176 (160) Napoli Serie A £1,011,577 (£19,453) $1,669,305 ($32,102)

177 (-) Mainz Bundesliga £1,009,291 (£19,409) $1,665,531 ($32,029)

178 (-) Zaragoza La Liga £1,004,964 (£19,326) $1,658,391 ($31,892)

179 (-) St Pauli Bundesliga £1,003,707 (£19,302) $1,656,318 ($31,852)

180 (185) West Bromwich Albion EPL £1,000,064 (£19,232) $1,650,305 ($31,737)

181 (167) Colorado Avalanche NHL £999,771 (£19,226) $1,649,821 ($31,727)

182 (162) Villarreal La Liga £994,812 (£19,131) $1,641,640 ($31,570)

183 (188) Sampdoria Serie A £987,458 (£18,990) $1,629,504 ($31,337)

184 (144) Cincinnati Bengals NFL £957,697 (£18,417) $1,580,392 ($30,392) <<<<< NFL lowest paid

185 (189) New York Islanders NHL £921,185 (£17,715) $1,520,140 ($29,233) <<<<< NHL lowest paid

186 (-) Wolverhampton Wanderers EPL £887,146 (£17,061) $1,463,969 ($28,153)

187 (-) Freiburg Bundesliga £836,167 (£16,080) $1,379,842 ($26,535) <<<<< BUNDESLIGA lowest paid

188 (181) Rangers SPL £821,484 (£15,798) $1,355,612 ($26,069)

189 (166) Palermo Serie A £748,211 (£14,389) $1,234,698 ($23,744)

190 (187) Espanyol La Liga £730,883 (£14,055) $1,206,102 ($23,194)

191 (196) Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks * NPB £724,013 (£13,923) $1,194,766 ($22,976)

192 (183) Hanshin Tigers NPB £707,976 (£13,615) $1,168,302 ($22,467)

193 (192) Mallorca La Liga £675,051 (£12,982) $1,113,970 ($21,422)

194 (186) Yomiuri Giants NPB £670,758 (£12,899) $1,106,885 ($21,286)

195 (191) Bologna Serie A £643,128 (£12,368) $1,061,291 ($20,409)

196 (205) Udinese Serie A £642,018 (£12,346) $1,059,458 ($20,374)

197 (190) Catania Serie A £635,979 (£12,230) $1,049,493 ($20,183)

198 (-) Real Sociedad La Liga £634,447 (£12,201) $1,046,964 ($20,134)

199 (202) Getafe La Liga £626,833 (£12,054) $1,034,400 ($19,892)

200 (-) Parma Serie A £589,060 (£11,328) $972,067 ($18,694)

201 (198) Chunichi Dragons NPB £588,812 (£11,323) $971,658 ($18,686)

202 (-) Bari Serie A £557,757 (£10,726) $920,411 ($17,700)

203 (184) Cagliari Serie A £534,159 (£10,272) $881,469 ($16,951)

204 (210) Saitama Seibu Lions NPB £523,308 (£10,064) $863,563 ($16,607)

205 (197) Osasuna La Liga £517,709 (£9,956) $854,323 ($16,429)

206 (199) Racing Santander La Liga £502,482 (£9,663) $829,195 ($15,946)

207 (203) Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters NPB £494,972 (£9,519) $816,803 ($15,708)

208 (200) Deportiva La Coruna La Liga £484,717 (£9,321) $799,880 ($15,382)

209 (208) Tokyo Yakult Swallows NPB £479,280 (£9,217) $790,908 ($15,210)

210 (195) Lecce Serie A £478,911 (£9,210) $790,298 ($15,198)

211 (207) Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles NPB £472,737 (£9,091) $780,111 ($15,002)

212 (209) Chiba Lotte Marine NPB £435,949 (£8,384) $719,403 ($13,835)

213 (-) Blackpool EPL £435,640 (£8,378) $718,893 ($13,825) <<<<< EPL lowest paid

214 (206) Chievo Serie A £421,441 (£8,105) $695,463 ($13,374)

215 (214) Malaga La Liga £421,273 (£8,101) $695,184 ($13,369)

216 (-) Brescia Serie A £384,170 (£7,388) $633,957 ($12,191)

217 (211) Yokohama Bay Stars NPB £375,907 (£7,229) $620,322 ($11,929)

218 (-) Levante La Liga £350,215 (£6,735) $577,924 ($11,114)

219 (222) LA Galaxy * MLS £336,807 (£6,477) $555,799 ($10,688)

220 (221) Heart of Midlothian SPL £328,104 (£6,310) $541,437 ($10,412)

221 (219) Orix Buffaloes NPB £322,802 (£6,208) $532,688 ($10,244)

222 (218) New York Red Bulls MLS £320,644 (£6,166) $529,126 ($10,176)

223 (220) Hiroshima Toyo Carp NPB £320,617 (£6,166) $529,082 ($10,175) <<<<< NPB lowest paid

224 (-) Hercules La Liga £304,534 (£5,856) $502,543 ($9,664)

225 (223) Almeria La Liga £296,921 (£5,710) $489,979 ($9,423)

226 (-) Cesena Serie A £253,476 (£4,875) $418,285 ($8,044) <<<<< SERIE A lowest paid

227 (229) Sporting Gijon La Liga £230,664 (£4,436) $380,642 ($7,320) <<<<< LA LIGA lowest paid

228 (227) Toronto FC MLS £195,103 (£3,752) $321,959 ($6,192)

229 (228) Hibernian SPL £172,728 (£3,322) $285,036 ($5,481)

230 (225) Aberdeen SPL £156,094 (£3,002) $257,586 ($4,954)

231 (-) Gold Coast * AFL £136,690 (£2,629) $225,565 ($4,338)

232 (247) Dundee United SPL £130,668 (£2,513) $215,628 ($4,147)

233 (230) Collingwood AFL £127,508 (£2,452) $210,413 ($4,046)

234 (237) Kilmarnock SPL £125,029 (£2,404) $206,323 ($3,968)

235 (232) Hawthorn AFL £123,617 (£2,377) $203,993 ($3,923)

236 (231) Geelong AFL £123,192 (£2,369) $203,291 ($3,909)

237 (239) West Coast Eagles AFL £123,169 (£2,369) $203,253 ($3,909)

238 (241) Essendon AFL £122,860 (£2,363) $202,744 ($3,899)

239 (238) Carlton AFL £122,137 (£2,349) $201,551 ($3,876)

240 (244) Sydney Swans AFL £121,462 (£2,336) $200,436 ($3,855)

241 (236) Fremantle AFL £121,390 (£2,334) $200,318 ($3,852)

242 (240) St Kilda AFL £121,227 (£2,331) $200,049 ($3,847)

243 (235) Richmond AFL £121,214 (£2,331) $200,027 ($3,847)

244 (233) Adelaide Crows AFL £120,630 (£2,320) $199,063 ($3,828)

245 (248) Motherwell SPL £120,600 (£2,319) $199,014 ($3,827)

246 (242) Melbourne AFL £120,520 (£2,318) $198,882 ($3,825)

247 (234) Brisbane Lions AFL £120,256 (£2,313) $198,447 ($3,816)

248 (243) Port Adelaide AFL £119,853 (£2,305) $197,782 ($3,804)

249 (246) North Melbourne AFL £119,426 (£2,297) $197,077 ($3,790)

250 (245) Western Bulldogs AFL £118,803 (£2,285) $196,049 ($3,770) <<<<< AFL lowest paid

251 (270) Chivas USA MLS £108,256 (£2,082) $178,644 ($3,435)

252 (251) St Mirren SPL £106,380 (£2,046) $175,548 ($3,376)

253 (255) Seattle Sounders MLS £104,850 (£2,016) $173,024 ($3,327)

254 (-) St Johnstone SPL £101,916 (£1,960) $168,182 ($3,234)

255 (250) Philadelphia Union MLS £98,310 (£1,891) $162,232 ($3,120)

256 (262) FC Dallas MLS £95,375 (£1,834) $157,387 ($3,027)

257 (-) Vancouver Whitecaps MLS £90,954 (£1,749) $150,092 ($2,886)

258 (259) Real Salt Lake MLS £90,853 (£1,747) $149,926 ($2,883)

259 (-) Portland Timbers MLS £90,604 (£1,742) $149,515 ($2,875)

260 (256) Houston Dynamo MLS £89,614 (£1,723) $147,882 ($2,844)

261 (226) Chicago Fire MLS £88,184 (£1,696) $145,521 ($2,798)

262 (257) DC United MLS £85,631 (£1,647) $141,307 ($2,717)

263 (258) Colorado Rapids MLS £77,237 (£1,485) $127,457 ($2,451)

264 (253) New England Revolution MLS £76,235 (£1,466) $125,802 ($2,419)

265 (260) San Jose Earthquakes MLS £73,205 (£1,408) $120,802 ($2,323)

266 (-) Montreal Impact MLS £71,788 (£1,381) $118,464 ($2,278)

267 (254) Sporting Kansas City MLS £70,771 (£1,361) $116,786 ($2,246)

268 (268) BC Lions * CFL £69,946 (£1,345) $115,425 ($2,220)

269 (261) Edmonton Eskimos CFL £64,163 (£1,234) $105,881 ($2,036)

270 (263) Winnipeg Blue Bombers CFL £63,904 (£1,229) $105,455 ($2,028)

271 (271) Inverness Caledonian Thistle SPL £63,540 (£1,222) $104,854 ($2,016)

272 (269) Hamilton Tiger-Cats CFL £62,969 (£1,211) $103,911 ($1,998)

273 (266) Saskatchewan Roughriders CFL £59,852 (£1,151) $98,768 ($1,899)

274 (267) Calgary Stampeders CFL £59,663 (£1,147) $98,456 ($1,893)

275 (265) Toronto Argonauts CFL £59,653 (£1,147) $98,440 ($1,893)

276 (264) Montreal Alouettes CFL £58,270 (£1,121) $96,157 ($1,849) <<<<< CFL lowest paid

277 (272) Hamilton SPL £55,548 (£1,068) $91,665 ($1,763) <<<<< SPL lowest paid

278 (252) Columbus Crew MLS £54,156 (£1,041) $89,369 ($1,719) <<<<< MLS lowest paid

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As Kaka hits 10m followers: the world’s 20 most popular sportsmen on Twitter

Wednesday, April 25th, 2012

By Sportingintelligence

25 April 2012

Kaka has become the first sportsman in the world to amass 10 million followers on the micro-blogging website Twitter.

As this report from the Associated Press detailed when the Real Madrid footballer passed the landmark, he tweeted: ‘Thank youuuuu. To celebrate I’ll make a twitcam’.

Whatever that means.

Love it or hate it, Twitter has soared into the media mainstream in the past year and is routinely used by millions of people as a primary source of breaking news, as well as a platform for promotion.

Sportingintelligence has compiled a list of the world’s 20 most followed sportsmen on Twitter (and they are all men aside from the athlete in 20th place, Serena Williams). See graphic below for details.

Eleven of the top 20 are footballers, which is indicative of what most people already know – that the beautiful game is the world’s most popular sport.

Basketball players (5) are next best represented, which is apt given that basketball is football’s closest challenger in team sports, primarily thanks to the NBA.

One cyclist, one NFL star, one boxer and Serena Williams make up the 20.

Six of the 11 footballers are from two clubs in Spain: Kaka and Cristiano Ronaldo in the No1 and No2 slots are from Real Madrid, while four others are from Barcelona.

Manchester United contribute two players, Wayne Rooney in sixth place and Rio Ferdinand at No19.

Globally iconic figures of sport who are bubbling under this list with between 2m and 2.5m followers include Sachin Tendulkar, Tiger Woods and Mike Tyson, while Uruguayan footballer Diego Forlan is among those just outside the top 20.

As with all social media, things can change extremely rapidly.

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Madonna pips gridiron as Super Bowl draws all-time US record TV audience

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

By Sportingintelligence

7 February 2012

Sunday’s Super Bowl victory by the New York Giants against the New England Patriots attracted a live TV audience in America alone of 111.3 million people – making it the most watched programme in the history of US television, of any genre.

That astonishing number means that more than one in three of all people of all ages in America sat and watched the whole four-hour spectacle on TV in their homes. The audience on Sunday just pipped the previous US TV record of 111m viewers; that was set by the 2011 Super Bowl between the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

The 111.3m number is a ‘average’ figure, or the average number who watched the whole thing. The peak (most people at one time) was higher. Madonna’s half-time show on its own attracted 114m people in the USA, beating the sport itself.

Super Bowl’s stunning success in its key home market of the USA is admirable, but the event does largely remain a domestic attraction; the 111.3m US audience will be something well in excess of 80 per cent of the total global audience. Or in other words, the audience in the rest of the world combined won’t add more than a few tens of millions at most to the 111.3m US total. Any claims of billions are risible and nonsense.

The biggest ‘club’ occasion now in world sport is football’s (real football’s) Champions League final each year. As we reported back in January 2010, the ‘epochal moment’ when the Champions League final pipped Super Bowl first arrived in 2009. (More detail on that here).

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Barcelona, Real Madrid and Manchester United untouchable in cyberspace

Monday, February 6th, 2012

By Sportingintelligence

6 February 2012

In August 2010, as Facebook registered its 500 millionth active user, Sportingintelligence assessed the world’s ‘most popular’ sports teams by ‘Facebook fans’ – and Turkey’s Galatasaray came out on top.

The ‘monetisation’ of sports fans via social media remains in its infancy. But in a rapidly changing multi-media world, we examined how and why the Turkish giants were No1, which was as much due to Galatasaray’s early adoption of Facebook as a marketing tool as anything else. (Read that piece in Turkish here).

With Faceboook’s mammoth stock floatation in the headlines, we have repeated the exercise 18 months on and the results are below. After a year and a half, many of the same names still feature – but with hugely inflated ‘fan numbers’ as social networking has become ever more mainstream.

Barcelona, Real Madrid and Manchester United trounce the rest with more than 20m Facebook followers; the LA Lakers are the only other team in world sport with more than 10m.

Ten of the top 20 come from football (including six of the top seven, four of those from the Premier League), with four top-20 teams from basketball’s NBA, three from the NFL, two from baseball’s MLB and one team from cricket: the Indian national team.

The list is self-explanatory, and this time we have added the pay rank of each team, by position in our most recent Global Sports Salaries Survey. For more on PAY RANK, click here.

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NFL remains world No1 in attendance as Patriots and Giants meet in Super Bowl

Sunday, February 5th, 2012

By Nick Harris

SJA Internet Sports Writer of the Year

5 February 2012

The NFL has increased its already remarkable attendance levels in the current season to an average of 67,394 fans per match, Sportingintelligence can reveal.

The NFL’s 2011-12 figures show an increase on the 66,960 fans per game that attended in the 2010-11 season.

The current season concludes with Sunday’s Super Bowl XLVI, featuring the Patriots against the Giants in Indianapolis.

There are better attended sports leagues in US College football, as a previous feature on this site explored.

But the NFL holds sway in the world of professional sports.

The German Bundesliga’s top division takes the No2 spot, with Australia’s AFL Aussie Rules football in the No3 spot above the English Premier League at No4.

The top 10 leagues are shown below, as are the two biggest indoor leagues, the NBA and NHL.

Big crowds don’t always mean big paydays for the stars involved. The NBA is the best-paid league in the world by average earnings per player.

Sportingintelligence’s Global Sports Salary Survey in 2011 showed that Premier League players and MLB baseball players also had average annual salaries higher than NFL players.

MLB baseball attracts more fans in total per season (more than 73 million in 2011) than any pro league in the world, but fewer on average per game than the NFL.

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REVEALED: Royal Wedding TV audience closer to 300m than 2bn (because sport, not royalty, reigns)

Sunday, May 8th, 2011

By Nick Harris

SJA Internet Sports Writer of the Year

9 May 2011

Fanciful predictions said two billion people would watch the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton live on TV around the world – and around 300m actually did, according to preliminary findings of research by sportingintelligence into the real global audience.

That figure is an extrapolation from figures in 11 major countries that account for almost half the world’s population: China, India, the USA, Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Spain, Argentina, Canada and Australia.

Those countries are all in the top 50 by population, and include the three most populous. The total wedding audience for that half share of the world was 161.92m people. See the table at the bottom of this piece for a more detailed breakdown.

We have also looked at data from a selection of other countries, including Brazil and Japan, but have yet to establish viewers there in terms of actual numbers of people (as opposed to a ratings figure, which tells us only a percentage share of an audience at a time of day, but not how many people overall, yet). Early findings in those countries are consistent with a global 300m audience.

Viewing figures are routinely exaggerated before events. Made-up numbers erroneously go down in history as fact. This often happens in the sporting world, as this website mused ahead of the nuptials of William – who is the president of the English FA, and a defender of the Aston Villa faith – and Kate.

So in an attempt to find the real numbers – and show why sport, not royalty, reigns in any given territory – sportingintelligence considered the official TV figures for the wedding from the UK and 10 other countries of varying size, politics, wealth and geography from Europe, North and South America, Asia and Australasia. (Africa, the forsaken continent, has one billion people but even in the richest countries only one in three people have access to TV at home, and in the poorest African countries fewer than one per cent have TV. Data in most African countries is less reliable diary data in any case).

Extrapolated to the whole world, the 162m from our 11 ‘sample’ countries would make a total audience of around 340m people but 340m is almost certainly too high because our 11 countries contain key nations where interest is especially high, including the UK (where a massive 42 per cent of the population watched), the USA, Canada and Australia.

A number of countries – including Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and North Korea among others – had no live coverage on any state or other domestic channel, and while it is possible people in those countries could take feeds from other places, the audiences would have been so low as to be almost insignificant.

The percentage data we have from nations like Brazil and Japan can be included in our findings when confirmed as numbers of people. (And anyone with reliable data for nations not mentioned, please feel free to email it to us at submissions@sportingintelligence.com).

Provisionally it appears that around 1.2m Brazilian urban households watched live on TV, but whether that translates to 2m or 5m viewers (or anywhere in between, in a country of 191m people) is not yet certain. It will be a decent share of a small 6am audience.

Similarly, we know that the wedding had a 23 per cent audience share of Japanese viewers at the relevant evening local time on NHK, but without knowing the number of people watching TV, we don’t want to count numbers that are guesses. If a third of Japan (population 128m) was watching on 29 April, and 23 per cent of those were watching the wedding, that would be 9.75m people, or almost eight per cent of Japan, a very decent figure. But we don’t know, yet.

To put the popularity of the wedding in context, a greater share of the audience in Japan at the same time (almost 30 per cent) was watching coverage of the figure skating world championships in Moscow.

As a general rule, only major global sports events – namely Olympic ceremonies and football World Cup finals – will get anywhere close to 1bn viewers, let alone 2bn, as discussed here.

And in any given territory, records will be set (and are held) mostly by major sporting events, which will always be of local interest either because teams from that nation are involved, or that nation is a host.

Britain’s most watched TV event of any genre in history was the 1966 World Cup final, with 32.2m viewers, beating this year’s wedding by more than six million. A number of other football matches have had better ratings in Britain than the wedding.

The American TV audience for Wills ‘n’ Kate was 22.8m, a whopping figure for the time of day, but a small number compared to the 111m people in the USA who watched this year’s Super Bowl live on TV in its entirety.

In India, 42.1m people tuned in to the wedding, which in gross terms made it the biggest single wedding audience by country. But that equates to only 3.48 per cent of India’s population of 1.2bn people. And the cricket World Cup final this year attracted 25m more people than the wedding.

In China, the wedding rights were bought by the Shanghai Media Group, and while it was available across the country, in many areas it was via pay-TV, which always limits the audience. Local sources say a maximum of 30m watched live in China (2.24 per cent of the population), although this may be slightly high. China’s highest ever TV confirmed audience was 500m (ish) watching on state TV, CCTV, from a global 1bn audience who tuned in to the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

In Canada, a very respectable 5.2m of 34m people watched the wedding (15.29 per cent of the population) but this pales besides the 16.6m (half the country) who watched Canada win the Olympic ice hockey gold medal last year in Vancouver.

Some of Britain’s European neighbours posted decent wedding figures (see table) but nothing compared to their sporting highs. In Germany, for example, the wedding figure of 4.48m people is small compared to the 30m who watched Germany play Italy in the semi-finals live on domestic TV during the 2006 World Cup.

One surprise in our research was the massive wedding audience, relatively, in the supposedly anti-monarchy enclave of sports-mad Australia. The biggest reported TV audiences in Australian history were for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2000 Sydney Olympics, with more than 6m people, albeit before the introduction of the most accurate meter monitoring in 2001.

Since that date, the most-watched programmes on Aussie TV have been the Australian Open tennis final of 2005 (Hewitt v Safin, 4.04m people) followed by the rugby union World Cup final of 2003 (Australia v England, 4.01m).

The wedding beat them both Down Under, with 4.34m. Call yourselves sports fans, cobbers? Seems like you’d rather have a Royal love story to us . . .

For those interested in further reading on selected audiences, follow links to stories about wedding ratings in the UK, in the USA, in Canada, in Australia, in France, in Spain, in Germany, in Italy, in New Zealand, in Argentina, in India, in Brazil and in Japan.

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Slam dunk: NBA the richest sports league in the world by average pay

Thursday, April 21st, 2011

By Nick Harris

SJA Internet Sports Writer of the Year

22 April 2011

The best paid sportsmen in the world, judged on average earnings per player across whole leagues, are the basketball players who make their living in the NBA in North America, according to the findings of sportingintelligence’s Global Sports Salaries Report 2011 (GSSS 2011), published today.

Across the 30 teams in the NBA, the average base salary in the latest completed season was £2.9m per player per season, or £55,816 per week. At current exchange rates, that equates to US$4.79m per year (which is €3.29m per year) or US$92,199 per week (which is €63,352 per week).

Earlier this week, we revealed that the best paid teams in global sport were Barcelona (from Spanish football), Real Madrid (ditto) and then the New York Yankees (US baseball), the latter having been knocked off the No1 perch they inhabited in our last report a year ago.

But when measuring leagues as a whole, the NBA is the richest, man for man. One reason for this is that teams (and squads / rosters) have fewer players per team than any other among the world’s major sports leagues. The simplistic conclusion from that is that the pot of wages at each NBA team is divided among fewer players than at, say, each NFL franchise. But that is far from the whole story.

If fewer players meant bigger money, always, then we would expect NHL ice hockey players (with fewer players per team than the NFL) to earn more than NFL players, on average. In our report last year, they did, just.

But this time, NFL players earned more. Why? Because there wasn’t any NFL salary cap or floor in 2010? (That is a much more convoluted debate for another day). But NFL players earned more per man in 2010 than NHL players. In the 2010 season (ending in the 2011 Super Bowl), NFL players earned £1.44m on average each per year (£27,637 per week) according to the GSSS 2011, against ‘only’ £1.39m per NHL player per year on average (£26,822 per week) in the 2010-11 season.

One of the issues – but only one – that we hope to explore on this site in the near future is the argument that NFL players might be the chronically underpaid performers of global sport. That’s for another day.

Back to today, the report contains average team salary calculation for 272 teams from 14 leagues. Those 14 leagues are the NBA (basketball), IPL (cricket), MLB (baseball), Premier League (English football), NFL (US gridiron), NHL (ice hockey), Bundesliga (German football), Serie A (Italian football), La Liga (Spanish football), NPB (Japanese baseball), SPL (Scottish football), AFL (Aussie Rules football), MLS (American soccer) and CFL (Canadian gridiron).

When only weekly pay is taken into account, the No2 league by average pay is cricket’s IPL. It last just six weeks per year but with multi-million dollar short-term contracts for the best players and six-figure deals for many more, it is justifiable for inclusion, not least because many of those involved earn other incomes elsewhere during the rest of the year.

The full contents of the GSSS 2011 are detailed here.

One of the features of the report is a wage distribution chart per league that shows the relative pay levels between the teams in each league. Some leagues have massive discrepancies between the best paid and worst paid teams.

Here is the distribution chart for the league with the biggest discrepancy, where players at the best paid team earn an average of 39.47 times as much as the players at the worst paid team in that league:

And here is the distribution chart for the league with the smallest discrepancy, where players at the best paid team earn an average of 1.08 times as much as the players at the worst paid team in that league:

Does pay in these leagues affect results? Is one inherently fairer than the other? These are the kind of questions and debates that the report hopes to explore and foster.

The headline findings of the report, including the list of the best paid teams are freely available, here on this website, and at ESPN The Magazine. We will also carry more features and analysis arising from findings in the report on this site in the near future.

For those who want the full report, you can find details of its full contents, and how to order, here.

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REVEALED: Barcelona and Real Madrid overtake Yankees as world’s best paid teams

Wednesday, April 20th, 2011

By Nick Harris

SJA Internet Sports Writer of the Year

20 April 2011

Barcelona are the best paid team in global sport measured by average first-team wages, ahead of their great rivals Real Madrid in second place, knocking baseball’s New York Yankees from the No1 spot, according to the Global Sports Salaries Survey 2011, to be published this week by sportingintelligence.

The average first team pay at Barcelona has been calculated at £95,081 per player per week, or £4,944,211 per year in the period under review. Real Madrid’s players in No2 place earned £88,421 per week (£4.6m per year) while first-team stars at the Yankees, at No3, will earn an average of £81,206 per man per week in the 2011 season, or £4.2m per year.

Click on graphic (left) to enlarge to see the top 12 in detail.

This year’s report has been compiled in association with ESPN The Magazine in America, which carries exclusive details in its 2 May 2011 edition, a special ‘All About the Money’ issue, on sale now.

SLAM DUNK: NBA is the best paid league in the world. More here

The salaries report features average salary information from 272 teams in 14 leagues in seven sports across 10 countries. ESPN The Magazine carries the top section of that main list online at this link, where there are more links to other content and details about the special issue of the magazine.

Sportingintelligence’s first global salaries report was published last year and compared average first-team pay on a like-for-like basis for the first time at clubs in the world’s richest and most popular sports leagues.

This year’s full report, to be published on Friday, has been expanded to include the dozen most popular sports leagues in the world (by average attendance per game) plus the MLS and SPL as examples of smaller leagues from the world’s most popular sport, football.

The LA Lakers and Orlando Magic of the NBA are No4 and No5 in this year’s list, followed by Chelsea of the Premier League, Inter Milan of Serie A, baseball’s Boston Red Sox, and the NBA’s Denver Nuggets.

Manchester City, owned by Sheikh Mansour of Abu Dhabi, have stormed into the top 10, with City’s average first-team annual pay in the 2009-10 season calculated at £3.66m ($5.9m) per player, or £70,476 ($112,761) per week.

The Premier League remains the richest football league in the world and five of its clubs – Chelsea, City, Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal – are among the top 30 best paid teams.

The NBA remains the richest league in terms of average pay per player across the whole NBA, and NBA teams occupy 10 of the top 30 places, while MLB baseball teams occupy eight, teams from La Liga, Serie A and the IPL two places each, and the Bundesliga one.

The full report 78-page report reveals the best-paid leagues overall, contains 56 pages of league-by-league detail assessing the relationship between money and success, and includes prize earnings for the top golfers and top tennis players to see how team sports earnings compare to those in major solo sports.

More details from the report and features based around its findings will appear on sportingintelligence.com in the coming days and weeks.

Pre-order information for anyone interested in purchasing the full report is available upon request.

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Global Sports Salaries Survey 2012: the richest teams by average first-team pay

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